


there's nothing burning in your veins anymore

by babelincoln



Category: 2NE1, BLACKPINK (Band), Winner (Band), iKON (Korea Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Digimon, Other, so it's kind of a digimon au but you don't need any knowledge of digimon to understand it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 19:01:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18079121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/babelincoln/pseuds/babelincoln
Summary: nine years ago, the sky had looked the exact same, but nobody could see it but her and sandara and junhoe and jinwoo. a weekend later and they were falling through a screen, and she woke up in the digital world. she explored, trained, fought and saved two dimensions from peril. then she got sent home. she had aged three years, grown to thirteen and found herself back in her ten year old body, free from the muscles in her shoulders and the scars she wore with pride. separated from the creature with whom she shared the purest and most unbreakable bond imaginable. she had reverted physically, but mentally, jisoo had matured into someone with something to live and fight for.how did everyone manage to live normal lives? why do they expect her to do the same?





	there's nothing burning in your veins anymore

“you’re gonna hate yourself in the morning if you don’t sleep.”  
  
jisoo’s eyes are strained from staring at her computer, and the room is so dark that the light pouring in from the door to the hallway is blinding as she turns to face sandara’s silhouette- her roommate stands in mysterious shade, backlit by a halo of light; unsurprisingly fitting. even less surprising is the sisterly care laced within the warning. sandara has a knack for saying things in the kindest and most selfless possible manner. jisoo doesn’t remember a time in which she didn’t know sandara, though- she can pick up what’s hidden under those words.  
  
“which translates to ‘i can hear you typing through the wall, so shut the fuck up,’ right?” she retorts, and her eyes adjust just enough to the new lighting to see sandara smirk and blink her eyes innocently.  
“gosh, i can’t just be worried for my best friend?” she asks, taking mock offence.  
“you can be worried about _chaerin_ - _ah_ all you want, eonni.” jisoo says; and it’s a joke and if it comes out a little too bitter, sandara is sweet enough not to pick up on it.  
  
instead, she manages to stay graceful as she navigates jisoo’s bomb site of a bedroom, resting her bony elbows on jisoo’s shoulders- looking over the laptop screen with a face that pretends it knows what it’s looking at.  
“people can have more than one best friend, jisoo,” she hums. “what’s got you click-clacking away at 2am, anyway?”  
“you want all the techno-jargon, or the cliff’s notes?”  
“how about ‘extremely patient customer service operator talking a 72 year old woman through booting up her new laptop?’”  
  
jisoo snorts, mostly because sandara isn’t reaching too far- anything that doesn’t fit in one hand and that can’t access instagram is too much for her to handle.  
“earlier on, i read an article about the future of virtual reality. like, the prospect that someone’s consciousness may be transported into a game-”  
“i know where this is going,” sandara interrupts, her voice is above jisoo’s ears and she can’t see her face, but the ever-so-slight dismay rings like tinnitus. “and you’re _officially_ banned from watching _black mirror._ ”  
“it just brought stuff back, you know? it was an article about going into a digital world-”  
“jisoo…” sandara sighs. it’s matronly, in a frustrating way that always appears when this subject presents itself. “i know how much you miss it, but it’s been over for a long time, now. what, were you trying to code a virtual digital world?”  
  
feeling embarrassed, jisoo focuses her eyes steadily upon her screen, but she can never really concentrate with an audience. “of course not, vr doesn’t work like that. i was just trying to see if i could get the analyser to open.”  
“i don’t want to sound harsh, but how many times have you tried that in the past seven years? if it was going to work, it would have.”  
“yeah, but-” jisoo sighs. her fixation is hard for the others to understand, deeply so; but quite frankly, she doesn’t understand how they can act like none of it ever happened. “i just want _something,_ y’know?”  
sandara says nothing; jisoo feels a little judged, and so she shrugs her arms off of her shoulders in the least aggressive manner she can manage.  
  
once upon a time, fire had burned so bright in sandara’s eyes; childish bravery born from her duty as eldest to protect the three children she had chased down a computer into a whole new world. but now, sandara is all gentle smiles and badly hidden anxiety. jisoo gets it, she guesses. underneath all that adrenaline was a fuckton of fear; and those couple of years sandara had on them was a couple more years of understanding that life is pretty fragile and easy to lose. jisoo; and junhoe and jinwoo too, had believed they were in a video game. it was one massive adventure, nothing but fun and nothing to lose. but the grown ups had trusted sandara to look after them for the afternoon; and she took that role very seriously. sandara had a whole lot to lose.  
  
jisoo got it, kind of. of course sandara wouldn’t want to place her friends in danger again. but jisoo may not ever be able to accept that totally. how can one be told they’re destined for glory and heroism, and then so readily fall back into mundanity?  
  
“get some sleep, jisoo.” sandara says after the pause becomes a little too pregnant. jisoo mumbles something in a non-committal sort of way, but it seems to be enough of a promise for sandara, who casually remakes the perilous journey across jisoo’s cluttered floor, pausing in the doorway, silhouetted holy in the hall light. “maybe think of showering, too.”  
  
when the door clicks shut, jisoo is left once more in darkness. eyebrows furrowing, she pulls the collar of her t-shirt over the lower part of her face and gives herself a little sniff.

* * *

jisoo is quite accustomed to eating in her university cafeteria by herself, at this point. her laptop is usually company enough- and days like today, she needs to spend the break working. back in high school, she, junhoe and jinwoo (and sandara, sometimes, but nobody faulted her when she sat with her own classmates instead) had _their spot_ , a corner of the lunch hall where they gathered every day without fail; and if anybody dared to take it, she and junhoe would bully them into moving whilst jinwoo offered apologetic smiles despite making no effort to tell his friends to lay off. for as long as she could remember, the three-and-sometimes-four of them had been together. just having different classes to one another seemed like it would uproot everything, back then. going to different universities felt apocalyptic. it was a struggle to get used to that change for the first half of jisoo’s first year, but now that the summer is approaching, she’s settled into the routine.  
  
often, she wonders about the others and their lunchtime rituals. it’s a weird question to ask, so she hasn’t. she knows jinwoo probably still brings food from home; he’s far too sensible with his money than any contemporary art student has the right to be. she likes to imagine him scribbling away at his work on a mattress on the floor, caged in by windowless walls with bare plaster, decorated only by his drawings. in reality, his room is always spotless- it looks more like a hotel room than a home. but then, jisoo has to wonder how homely the apartment he shares with seven other boys because it’s cheap and close to his art school can possibly be. she’s only been there a couple of times, usually when he needs to stop off and grab something or change clothes. jinwoo was sensitive; he was quiet and nervous and needed a controlled (or at least controllable) atmosphere. that apartment full of loud, often drunk students couldn’t be farther from his comfort zone.    
  
in jisoo’s imagination, sandara isn’t dissimilar from the several gaggles of students circling jisoo- more friends in the group than there is room, meaning that tables had to be pushed together and chairs had to be borrowed from those unoccupied, or rather, those occupied by loners like jisoo.  
  
she doesn’t say loner proudly, though. she’s a people person through and through, but she’s always been far too reliant on the friends she’s already got, and making new ones is hard. especially when her classes are majoritied by sweaty boys who try with no solicitation to teach her the basics of a skill that once helped her save two worlds in one go. when she was thirteen years old, no less. a few months ago, junhoe wondered aloud if jisoo’s thoughts were in english or in code. jisoo was proud to hear that; and that pride is wounded when some condescending ass assumes she has no idea how to even turn her laptop on, and then snaps at her when she reminds him she got accepted for the same reasons he did.  
  
at the start of the year, junhoe was her only companion. english lit wasn’t even in the same building, but it’s not a long walk, and he’d told her that eating with her was far preferable to talking to snotty ex-private school kids about shakespeare. going to the same school as junhoe was a comfort to say the least. even if she did feel a pang of guilt when she’d see him around campus, laughing with his classmates, and she’d wonder if she was interrupting those relationships from reaching their potential. eventually, their lunches together were interrupted; he’d gotten an afternoon job at the coffee shop in his building (a cliche that jisoo had taken glee in pointing out.) and only had one day off during the week. if she was a good friend, she would have memorized his shifts by now. but she wasn’t, she guesses, and she’s just about to text him to ask if today was ‘jisoo day’ when his voice behind her answers her question.  
  
“if you keep keeping dara-nuna up all night, i truly believe she may have a fucking brain aneurysm.” he says, mirth dancing around the edges of what would otherwise sound like a warning. jisoo doesn’t bother craning her neck to look at him- her hand is perfectly visible over her shoulder, and her middle finger is all the response junhoe needs. he chuckles as he moves to sit down, entering her line of sight as he takes the seat opposite her. he has two wrapped sandwiches in his hands, the university logo shining obnoxiously on the sticker keeping the film from opening. sliding one across the table to jisoo, junhoe makes quick work of opening the remaining and digging in.  
“i’m not hungry.” she says, fingers tapping out line after line of code in front of her.  
through a mouthful of food, junhoe retorts, “oh, you already ate?”  
“uh, yeah.” she lies distractedly, eyes glued to her screen.  
“no you didn’t. jisoo.” he hovers out of his seat, leaning across the table to wave a crummy hand in front of her eyes.  
“gross, junhoe.” she complains, glaring at him.  
“this is my one day where i don’t have to work over lunch, and i choose to spend it with you every week. i walked over here from across campus, i bought you lunch, and i don’t even get eye contact?” he flops back down into his seat with a huff, somehow managing to make the bite he takes out of his sandwich passive-aggressive.      
  
for a moment, jisoo stops and remembers how lonely she feels without her friends and their companionship. and when she closes her laptop, she’s met with a pang of guilt at the genuinely surprised expression that paints junhoe’s face; as if giving him her full attention is some grand gesture. “hi, junhoe.” she says, smiling. “thanks for lunch.”  
“hey, soo. my pleasure” he replies, and it’s sarcastic as always, but his next mouthful of food doesn’t seem so much of an attack. “it’s been a minute since you were last that engrossed.”  
“i’ve been trying to figure out the-”  
“analyser?” he offers, smirking.  
“dara-eonni told you?” jisoo asks, pulling at the wrapping of her sandwich. it’s the cheapest thing available- flimsy bread and plastic-tasting cheese. still, though, she doesn’t expect junhoe to spend much on her, and at least he remembered she hated any type of lunchmeat.  
  
“nah, your _vigor_ told me. your keyboard’s gonna take you to court if you keep beating it up like that.” he snorts, finishing off his food in record time. licking crumbs from his fingers, he shakes his head. “i gave her a ride to work this morning, though. you really are keeping her awake.”  
“i’m not even making that much noise.” jisoo says, suddenly feeling defensive.  
“she’s a princess, though. it only takes a pea.” he shrugs. “you _are_ a really loud typer. apparently you curse to yourself, too.”  
“i do not.” jisoo snaps, turning her attention to her food.  
“has she been taking her meds?” junhoe asks. it’s a blunt question, one that suddenly throws weight on their banter. “only, it’s like, thursday today. and her box thing was still full- i caught a glimpse of it when she was looking for her phone in her purse this morning.”  
“more like your nosey ass took an eyeful to see what she had in there.” jisoo accuses, generally allergic of talking about serious matters.  
junhoe looks incredulous. “that’s what you’re taking from that?”  
  
jisoo sighs. “i don’t know if she’s taking them. she hates it when people ask her.” it’s not a lie; sandara becomes very defensive about her mental health. but the fact of the matter is that jisoo is often too uncomfortable to bring it up. “i don’t know. it’s shitty. we’re the ones who made her this way.”  
junhoe frowns, shaking his head. “that’s not fair. or true.”  
“she followed us.” jisoo says quietly, tearing at the crust of her sandwich and popping it in her mouth. “she still gets nightmares about not being able to save us.”  
junhoe leans in, lowering his voice. “the digital world did a number on _all_ of us. it’s not our fault they turned us into child soldiers. you don’t get out of that and remain totally mentally stable.”  
“speak for yourself.” jisoo retorts, giving her head a couple of taps with her index finger.  
he snorts. “never. but what _does_ speak for itself is obsessively trying to return to a world that turns kids into weapons.”  
  
at that, jisoo slides her sandwich back over to junhoe and opens her laptop again, pretending not to see him rolling his eyes.

* * *

“it’s insane for you to have less of a social life than _jinwoo_.” junhoe complains a few weeks later, laughing at jinwoo’s protest of indignation, tinny through the low quality of his laptop microphone. jisoo, cross legged on her bed, probably doesn’t sound a whole lot better across their discord server. the voice channel had been set up something like a year ago, during their short lived attempt to get a d&d campaign going. sandara had point blank refused to ‘sink to the level of geek’, promptly murdering _that_ idea. however, group calls still proved to be fun; and more nights than not, they’d spend an hour or so in each other's virtual company.  
  
“when have you known me to go to parties?” jisoo asks, cringing as the sounds of junhoe’s god-awful ‘getting ready’ playlist seeps through to his mic, warped and digitised by the old computer’s struggle to pick up noise. “‘sides, i’m swamped. i’m not gonna be able to chill until i either make a breakthrough or give up completely.”  
“maybe taking a break from the analyser thing is exactly what you need, soo.” jinwoo offers, and jisoo narrows her eyes despite knowing that nobody can see.  
“who’s side are you on, jinwoo?” she asks accusingly. he snorts.  
“trust me,” he says flatly. “i’m on yours.”  
“you’re gonna code yourself into an early grave.” junhoe pipes back up. “we both know dara-nuna is gonna drag you out the building with her when she leaves, anyway. may as well get ready, unless you wanna show up in sweatpants and some boyband tee.”  
  
startled, jisoo looks around her room dumbly. “what? why do you know what i’m-”  
both boys laugh, causing her to scowl.  
“fuck, you’re predictable.” junhoe chuckles, and jisoo snaps her laptop shut.  
  
with a sigh, she catches her reflection in mirror hanging on her door, trying to gauge whether or not it’s worth it to put all the time in to make herself presentable and then spend the rest of the night surrounded by sweaty drunk people, when that time could potentially be used fixing the analyser. as much as the boys would mock her, or sandara would accuse her of being a recluse- to be able to open up technology from the digital world, that would be huge. it would be the first step towards getting the _portal_ to open again. when she weighs it up, a night of coding would be much more productive than sitting uncomfortable as a bunch of first years get shitfaced in one of junhoe’s classmate’s tiny apartment.  
  
still, though. the look of delight on sandara’s face when she bursts in to convince jisoo to come along and sees her already in a party dress, applying lipstick in the mirror- or the contrast between jinwoo’s enthusiastic wave when they arrive to the way junhoe hollers her name and slings an arm around her (behind him, jinwoo mimes throwing back several shots for context) have their worth too. They’re definitely worth something.

* * *

jisoo is thirteen years old when she opens her eyes hazily to find herself in a jungle. her first instinct is to shriek, loud.    
  
“it’s okay.” says a small voice; childlike, it’s pronunciation reminds jisoo of tzuyu, the little girl next door- but it’s so high pitched that it can’t possible be human. her first instinct is not to be comforted, but rather just to scream even louder. “don’t be afraid!”  
  
she turns over and scrambles to her knees- and is met face to face with a creature that looks to be a cross between a housecat and a bowling ball.  
“what the hell?” she asks. she has more questions than she knows what to do with, and that is the only one for which she can think of the words. her mother would be angry at her for cussing- so would sandara, for that matter.  
“there’s nothing to be afraid of, jisoo.” the little creature- which knows her name, apparently, promises.  
“are you a fucking gremlin?” jisoo asks.  
“no! i’m nyaromon! and you’re in the digital world!”

* * *

jinwoo tells her she’s just too drunk, but jisoo swears blind she can see the static in the sky.  
  
“it’s too dark to see _anything_ in the sky.” he says, arm hooked around her waist, helping her down the street to her apartment. what does jinwoo know. what has jinwoo _ever_ known. jisoo asks him just that, and he responds not with words but with a wounded expression. jisoo feels like she’s just kicked a puppy, but she knows what she saw. just like that night, a night which was longer ago than it really was.  
  
(time doesn’t mean shit anymore, it hasn’t ever since she came back to the real world having been missing three years but only actually three hours.)  
  
“how come _you’re_ walking me home?” jisoo asks, throwing a bony elbow into jinwoo’s ribs and wriggling out of his grasp. he hisses and clutches at his side, glaring at her as she stumbles down the sidewalk, feeling very unsteady in the heels she had borrowed from sandara.  
  
“cause i’m a pushover, and nobody likes you when your drunk.”  
  
jisoo, fake pouts, spinning around uneasily, thrusting a finger into his face. “no! they do! nobody- nobody likes _you_ when you’re drunk or when you’re sober.”  
face blank, jinwoo says nothing, grabbing her shoulder and spinning her back around, urging her to keep walking.  
  
jisoo does so, eyes glued to the sky, looking for another sign. it’s talking to her and she knows it. she feels it. it wants her to come home. her, and junhoe, and jinwoo, and- hey, wait a second.  
“where’s sandara-eonni?” jisoo asks, looking around the street as if she’s waiting for the older girl to appear from nowhere.  
“she’s going to chaerin’s tonight, remember?” jinwoo says in his best gentle voice. usually, his voice is always gentle. everything about him is. but it’s like he said- nobody likes jisoo when she’s drunk. she knows this to be fact.  
  
as his words sink in, jisoo feels her eyes bubble up with tears. “she’s going to chaerin’s because she doesn’t like me anymore.” she states, voice pathetic.  
“i think she’s just going to get laid, jisoo.” jinwoo sighs. “hurry up.”  
  
jinwoo is uncharacteristically quick on his feet in steering jisoo into her building’s elevator, finding her keys, and delivering her to her apartment. he does not stick around for ‘afters,’ despite jisoo’s invite. he tells her that he’s had enough, and that she’s had more than enough. he even turns down her offer to fool around like that one time when they were fifteen. he tells her that that experience was instrumental in figuring out how much he liked to sit on dicks- he was cruder than usual when jisoo was drunk, ‘cause she’d always forget. jinwoo then tells her that, speaking of which, minho is waiting for him, and hot tails it out of there.  
  
feeling rejected and nauseous, jisoo stumbles back into her bedroom and collapses on her bed. the room is spinning too much for her to fall asleep, so she fishes her phone from her cleavage and seeks company from the last of her three friends not to leave her high and dry for the night.  
  
**jisoo:** _juuuuunhie. i have a full bottle of vodka here. after party 4 two?_  
  
dropping her phone as soon as the message is sent, her eyes drift upwards to the window she’d opened earlier to expel the smell of hairspray, and the sky still buzzes and shakes and she knows it isn’t just because she’s drunk. something is happening. fuck, she hopes something is happening.  
  
nine years ago, the sky had looked the exact same, but nobody could see it but her and sandara and junhoe and jinwoo. a weekend later and they were falling through a screen, and she woke up in the digital world. she explored, trained, fought and saved two dimensions from peril. then she got sent home. she had aged three years, grown to thirteen and found herself back in her ten year old body, free from the muscles in her shoulders and the scars she wore with pride. separated from the creature with whom she shared the purest and most unbreakable bond necessary. she had reverted physically, but mentally, jisoo had matured into someone with something to live and fight for.  
  
how did everyone manage to live normal lives? why do they expect her to do the same?  
  
her phone buzzes.  
  
**junhoe:** sorry babe, went home w jen. can’t be the one to screw & bounce. hang tomorrow?  
  
jisoo locks her phone and tries to throw it against the wall, but it doesn’t make the journey. it clatters weakly to the floor, which is good enough. at any rate, he’s not getting a response until tomorrow.  
  
from the desk on other side of the room, her laptop springs to life. humming loud and lighting the room, jisoo turns her head to stare, heart pounding. the excitement cripples her as if it’s dressing up as fear, and she doesn’t move. doesn’t blink. until she does blink, because the screen does nothing of note; only makes her dizzy, and she buries her face back in her mattress and groans.  
  
she thinks of sandara and chaerin, jinwoo and minho, junhoe and jennie. she falls asleep lonely. she misses the message that pops up on her laptop just five minutes later.  
  
> .  
> danger is coming.

* * *

minho answers the door with a frown- and it only deepens when he clocks jisoo- but she has no time for that today. she’s turned up at his house for one good reason, and she pushes past him into the hall, yelling on jinwoo.  
  
“jesus christ-” minho curses, closing the door and grabbing her wrist, dragging her into the living room with a serious expression. “my parents are asleep upstairs, dumbass. it’s 8am on a saturday morning.”  
  
“i need to talk to jinwoo. sandara-eonni and junhoe are on their way.” jisoo presses. she’s pulled a pair of sweatpants over her party dress, and her hair a man around her face; smudged with last night’s makeup. “it’s not my fault you still live at home.”  
  
the words make minho frown. “you’re still drunk.” he accuses, and jisoo doesn’t feel like admitting he’s right. there are much more important matters at hand, and it’s jinwoo she needs to talk about them with; not his boyfriend.  
“i’m fine.” she insists, already fishing her laptop out of her bag. “please get jinwoo, it’s really important.”  
“he’s still sleeping- should i be worried?” concern is evident upon minho’s features. it’s an emotion he still manages to look handsome in, even underneath hangover eyebags and extreme bedhead.  
“what- no, it’s fine. wake him up.” jisoo is dumbly aware of the fact she’s talking disrespectfully to minho in his own home, but this is _huge,_ too much so to care about the dirty look he gives her, or the curse he mutters as he brings a confused-looking jinwoo into the living room ten minutes later only to be promptly shooed away as they talk. jinwoo shoots his boyfriend an apologetic glance before the door shuts and they’re left alone. jisoo, with her frazzled brain full of excitement and fear and static, slams her laptop on the coffee table and opens it up, the message from last night blinking on the screen like the warning it is. jinwoo looks at it for a bunch of seconds that tick by like hours to jisoo, and then he takes a deep breath.  
“i’m going the fuck back to bed.”  
“what!? jinwoo, it’s—”  
  
jisoo doesn’t even know how to explain it- it’s a message from the digital world. a royal fucking invitation to return to glory, return to purpose. she doesn’t understand how anybody could resist that. why are jinwoo and sandara and junhoe so content to just exist in dire normalcy, going to work and studying all night and fucking minho and chaerin and jennie? she has a lifetime of suppressed frustration and hopelessness on her tongue before they’re interrupted, an angry minho ushering sandara and junhoe into the room before heading out with a harsh slam of the door.  
  
“jisoo, it’s so early.” starts sandara, but jisoo doesn’t have _time_ to apologise nor to feel guilty. this is more important than maybe anything has ever been, and she points to her laptop screen with an urgency. jinwoo sighs.  
  
“she’s officially gone crazy.” he tells them, holding his hands up.  
“no- guys. they’ve made contact with us, they need us. ‘danger is coming’, look! we’re gonna go back and help them.” jisoo presses. she expects it when sandara frowns, but the worried look on junhoe’s face breaks her heart. he had always been the one to at least humour her, always been the one willing to reminisce. he had been like a partner to her- friendship to courage, it’s what the prophecy foretold. couldn’t even he stand by her in this?  
“soo.” he says, flatly. “it’s just a bunch of zeros and ones.”  
  
jisoo’s brows furrow, looking towards the screen in a panic- but no, there it is, clear in writing. _danger is coming._ “wh-”  
“c’mon, jisoo.” sandara says through pursed lips. “let’s go home.”

* * *

jisoo’s room is cold as she closes her door behind her and leans her head against it. she never had closed her window, and seoul’s unforgiving winter nights hadn’t been kind. with the feeling of defeat heavy on her shoulders, she kneels on her bed to pull it shut, dumping her backpack on the floor and flopping downwards.  
  
why? why hadn’t they seen it. jisoo knows she isn’t going crazy, she knows they’ve reached out to her. why just her? is it because she’s the only one who still longs to be a hero? the only one who still needs a clear purpose in life to survive? anime and superhero movies hadn’t shown her how to cope with the mission being over. she had battled armies, and now she meets essay deadlines. perhaps junhoe’s jaded outlook from earlier had been right. maybe only jisoo can see because she’s the last one who can still be manipulated into playing toy soldier. but how can they groom her for divinity only to vanquish her back to mundanity?  
  
rolling onto her side, jisoo faces away from the window, turning her back to the little ways the clouds twitch, and the sound of static in her ears. she had had to double pinky promise sandara that she hadn’t taken any drugs last night. she’s pretty sure sandara doesn’t believe that, and jinwoo and junhoe seem equally concerned, given the way her phone flashes on and off from it’s place on the floor. she hadn’t picked it up. she regards it with a deadly glare- but honestly, she can’t even find the energy to keep being mad. she just feels lost.  
  
and then, as she’s drifting back into the arms of sleep, she jolts awake as her laptop begins to whir wildly from inside her laptop. scrambling off of her bed and onto the floor, she tears it from the bag and opens it. the foreboding message remains, and after a few seconds, another pops up.  
  
> .  
> danger is coming.  
> child of courage. we need you.  
  
her heart hammers in her chest, instantly feeling the palms of her hands dampen as something dawns on her- she needs to respond. why hadn’t she done it before? hands lingering over her keyboard, she begins to type. each letter feels like it takes a year to reach, and with a deep breath, she hits send.  
  
nothing happens. seconds tick by, and she waits, and eventually the laptop screen dims to black. the hands on her clock tick mockingly, and jisoo throws her head back against the side of her bed, allowing herself to cry in frustration. she lets everything out, wailing like a toddler, as all the conflict and trauma and desperation to mean something to the world and to have a destiny again leaves her body.  
  
jisoo climbs back onto her bed and curls up into a ball, letting herself fall asleep.

* * *

the rumble of the kettle hurts sandara’s ears. she’d never been good with noise; it hurt her between her ears. left her feeling on edge. between the hangover she had left from last night and the headache her best friend had given her from worry, it was entirely unwelcome.  
  
she leans against the counter as she waits for the water to boil, hugging her body and worrying her lip. jisoo was a handful, and these bursts of obsession would come and go, but it hasn’t been this bad since they were kids. it was scary- scary that jisoo doesn’t see that they, as children, were used as pawns in the war of adults. scary that jisoo wants to return to that. sandara curses the digital world in her head, for ruining four innocent minds, and for polluting jisoo so deeply.  
  
the kettle announces with a click that it’s done, and sandara snaps back to reality, pulling her and jisoo’s mugs from the cupboard and preparing their coffee to their individual preferences. it was time for a long and important conversation, and sandara hoped, perhaps naively, that that would be softened by a good hot drink.  
  
the first thing she notices as she pushes into jisoo’s room- unannounced, as is her habit, is that the room is freezing. the second is that jisoo is gone. backing up into the hallway, she looks to the bathroom- but the door is wide open, jisoo isn’t in there.  
  
“jisoo?” she calls out into the apartment, stepping back into the room and placing the mugs down on jisoo’s desk, but she gets no answer. frowning deeply, she fishes her phone out of her cardigan pocket and calls jisoo’s number- only to hear a familiar ringtone from the corner of the room, where her friend’s phone had been left laying on the floor.  
  
sandara furrows her eyebrows as a shiver rattles her body, and with a sigh she makes her way across the room and pulls jisoo’s open window closed.  
  
and she swears she sees the clouds flicker.

 

**Author's Note:**

> this is like a very specific niche that only i wanted filled, but i hope it's an enjoyable story anyway! as always, pls leave a comment and let me know what you thot. this was lowkey long for me but i'm still mad terrible at pacing n also i started this not long after i finished the last story i uploaded and finished it lit today. so this was over a year in the making because i kept taking breaks from it and returning but you know what! i got there in the end lol.


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